Violin by Johann Georg Stauffer, Vienna, December 1826

NMM 10028. Violin by Johann Georg Stauffer, Vienna, December 1826. Experimental model, in original condition. Because one is so used to seeing violin upper bouts more narrow than the lower, Stauffer's equalized upper bout appears wider than it actually is, an optical illusion. Board of Trustees, 2001.

Soundholes

Pegbox and Scroll

The design for this experimental model was published in the Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung in 1808, signed "P.", which Stauffer interpreted as designating "Pagatella," or Antonio Bagatella, a Paduan luthier who published his Memoir, or Rules for the Construction of Violins - Violas - Violoncellos - Double Basses in 1782. Similar experimental instruments by Stauffer are in the
Musikinstrumenten Museum, Leipzig (violin, 1828), and the Yale University
Collection of Musical Instruments, New Haven (violoncello, 1828).
Stauffer is also remembered as a guitar maker and as the inventor of the arpeggione, a hybrid 'cello/guitar with frets, for which Franz Schubert wrote a sonata (D821).